For our final video this week, we will be discussing pacing. If you aspire to enhance your writing, then pacing is a crucial aspect to consider. It is an incredibly significant part of writing, yet many writers neglect to invest time in learning how to pace a story, causing their books to suffer.
Pacing is one of those elusive qualities of writing whose importance cannot be overstated. Ultimately, a well-paced novel will read smoothly from beginning to end. Even if there are issues with the dialogue, plot, or characters, good pacing can help overcome all of these. However, when you perfect all of these other elements, when you have fantastic dialogue, tight plots, and strong characters, then pacing is the cherry on top. It’s the element that transforms a good book into a great one.
So, let’s discuss how you can improve your pacing. The first step is understanding the type of story you’re trying to write and the feeling you want to evoke in your reader. When someone steps into your world and begins to experience the story alongside the characters, what do you want them to feel? Is it a grand, sprawling, epic adventure? Do you want your reader to experience the sensation of standing on a bluff, looking out over a vast vista? Or do you want a tight, confined story? A story that makes you look over your shoulder and wonder what’s around the next corner? Depending on the type of story you want to tell, your pacing will need to be completely different.
However, there are a few universal elements when it comes to pacing. The first is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is incredibly important because it subconsciously clues the reader into expecting something. This anticipation for the reveal helps pull the reader through the story. However, if foreshadowing is too heavy-handed, it can harm the pacing of your story. But when sprinkled lightly, it can provide an absolutely delightful feeling for your reader.
The second thing you should do if you’re trying to learn pacing is to create micro-arcs. The arc of your story will run from beginning to end. By creating micro-arcs within that larger arc, which can be anywhere from one to five chapters in length, you can increase and decrease the tension in your story at will, aiding the pacing.
Many new authors, including myself when I was starting out, face two major problems: not having enough tension or having too much tension. If our story is nothing but tension, it’s likely to aggravate the reader, causing them to put the book away. Conversely, if there’s not enough tension, there won’t be anything to pull the reader through the story. By creating these micro-arcs, we can build and then decrease tension in a way that naturally pulls the reader through the story without aggravating them.
Lastly, when trying to improve your pacing, it’s crucial to cut scenes that don’t contribute to the world, the characters, or the conflict. You can add scenes that don’t necessarily build on the plot but do add rich information to the world. Similarly, you can create scenes that don’t add anything to the world or explore the conflict but do build the characters. The best scenes will do all three, but if you have a scene that does none of these things, then it needs to be discarded. It will only drag the story down and cause the pacing to be disjointed.
Pacing is what elevates a book from good to great. As a writer, it’s definitely worth spending some time thinking about pacing and striving to master this skill. We want to learn to use foreshadowing, create micro-arcs that last a chapter or two to better control the tension, and eliminate scenes that don’t contribute to the world, the characters, or the conflict. And as always, we must keep practicing. If you want to improve your writing, the only way is to write. So, ensure that you’re putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/Qouy4Ai3Cvc
Thanks for reading and watching.
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